corollary

Thursday, 1 March 2001

Foot and Mouth Disease

Listening to:

Tchaikovsky, piano concerto #1 in B flat minor, op. 23.

Foot and mouth disease is ravaging the livestock herds of Great
Britain. Well, actually foot and mouth doesn’t kill animals, it just
makes them poorly for a bit. However, the disease is incredibly
contagious. Britain had its last big epidemic in 1967. The first
case was in the Isle of Wight, an offshore island. It spread to the
rest of the country because the virus particles could float over the
sea to the mainland and infect animals there. Scary stuff.

There’s a vaccine too, but apparently no-one in Europe uses it. I
guess the calculation is that the money saved justifies the risk of
having to slaughter huge proportions of the national herds every so
often. In any case, farmers are compensated for animals that are
killed.

A couple of linked articles, nominally about games programming. The
first is more proselytizing for really modern languages (C++
doesn't count; Java doesn't really either). In my case, the author is
preaching to the choir and I believe every word of it. The
second is a humorous perspective on being a "normal" programmer
and being envious of cool games programmers who get to do neat stuff
with C++.

Monday, 5 March 2001

The symbolic species

Listening to:

Chopin, 24 preludes.

Just read:

Terrence Deacon, The
symbolic species.

This is a very thorough, and thus
rather slow-going, science book about our ability to think
symbolically. A consequence of this is that we use language,
while no other species does. Symbolic species
looks at why and how this might be from a number of different
angles.

The book is divided into three parts. The first includes a
discussion of what symbolic thought is, and how it can be
distinguished from iconic and indexical
knowledge which seem to be as much as other species ever seem to
use. In this first part, the way in which children learn
languages so quickly is also discussed. Noam Chomsky’s theory
is that children are imbued with some sort of Universal Grammar
that they can easily specialise to the actual grammar that they
are exposed to as they grow up. In this way, children make just
the right guesses when it comes to language acquisition.
Deacon suggests that it’s more reasonable to suppose that
languages, which evolve much faster than people do, have evolved
to make themselves easier to learn. This was wow moment
#1, and the neat thing about this book was that
there were quite a few more still to come.

The first part also includes commentary on recent experiments
with chimpanzees demonstrating that it is possible to get them
to learn symbolic knowledge.

Part 2 was the hardest part of the book to read, because so much
of it was about brain anatomy. The pages are overflowing with
pre-frontal cortexes (cortices?), cerebellums (cerebella?) and
ventricles. Nonetheless it too had its share of wow
moments, including a neat discussion of the way in
which brain development in primates can be distinguished from
development in other mammals, and then how human brain
development is different again. This naturally led into a
discussion of the Darwinian way in which neurons compete for
connections to potential targets when they grow. Because the
human pre-frontal cortex is so much bigger (proportionally, and
absolutely) than in other apes, it has correspondingly more
fingers in all of the brain's various pies. For example, it has
control over speech organs (tongue and larynx) in a way not
duplicated in other animals.

Part 2 also mentions evidence that basically demolishes the idea
that a Universal Grammar might be genetically encoded in our
brains. Brain imaging and brain dysfunctions (such as Broca’s
aphasia) reveal that language processing of semantically similar
tasks (inflecting to past tense, etc) happens in different
places in the brain depending on which language is being worked
on. In other words, our internal processing depends on the
surface syntax of the language, not some deep, universal
grammar.

In part 3, there is a great bit of speculative writing about
what might have prompted our ancestors to evolve in the
direction they did, acquiring symbolic thinking, language and
bigger brains. I can’t do the argument justice here, but I will
sum it up as “We have language so that we can marry”.
Definitely a wow moment. Deacon puts his case
against Universal Grammar idea once again, and then finishes by
making sensible comments about the “problem” of
consciousness.

An excellent, thought-provoking book, though very dense and a
slow read.

To read next:

Wednesday, 7 March 2001

Entry #150

Listening to:

Bartok, string quartet no. 4, (Sz 91)

LaTeX Slides

I’m working on some slides, and I just have to plug a neat package
called Prosper. It lets
me use LaTeX to write my slides (complete with all of LaTeX’s great
mathematics type-setting), and produces results that look suitably
PowerPoint-ish. An alternative technology is TeXPoint,
which allows the embedding of TeX/LaTeX material directly into
PowerPoint slides. I might use this if it weren’t for the fact that
I’m redoing a whole bunch of slides that were originally pure LaTeX.

My left heel hurts and I don’t know why. I guess I must have just
banged it at some stage, and now it’s bruised. Perhaps that’s it. If
it isn’t magically better by Monday I’m going to start cycling
everywhere.

Tuesday, 13 March 2001

Brahms and internet coffee

Listening to:

Brahms, symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98. There’s a moving
account in Swafford’s
biography of Brahms of him going to see a performance of
this work just weeks before he died. When the performance
finished, he stood in his box to acknowledge the applause, and
with tears running down his face, shocked all and sundry with
how obviously ill he was. Like his other three symphonies, this
is one of my favourite works; dramatic, full of feeling and
lyrical.

Now reading:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. Staying firmly
in the nineteenth century. In the edition I’m reading, this is
a 700 page epic, and may take me a while to finish.

Coffee cam to go

What I’ve seen described as the world’s first web-cam (I don’t know if
this is accurate or not), is closing soon. Yes, the Cambridge coffee
pot is going out of business because of our imminent shift to new
premises. Our system administrators recently sent round an e-mail to
the effect that this news has caused real problems for our
web-server. Usually it’s new things that cause request spikes.

Thursday, 15 March 2001

Entry #153

Listening to:

Mendelssohn, piano concerto no. 1 in G minor, op. 25. Another
traversal
CD. I haven't listened to this CD in ages, so this is a clear
indication of the value of doing the traversal. It's neat
music, so there's no reason for me to have avoided it. It's
just too easy when picking out my five or six CDs for the day to
decide on things that I've bought more recently.

A recent movie:

O Brother, where are thou? This was an
amusing film. It's really pretty light-weight, but that doesn't
make it any less effective. If you know to look for them, the
references to the Odyssey are fun to pick up. The
blue-grass soundtrack is also very appealing. Verdict: a very
enjoyable film.

I think my heel is healing (ba-boom).

As I write the Australian cricket team is going through all sorts of
pain in their game against India (the second test match in a series of
three). They have no batsmen left, are 174/8, and look almost certain
to lose their first test match in absolutely ages. They did as they
said they would, and played to win, even with a big target to get on
the last day, so they deserve some credit for playing positively. I
hope the Australian press, which can be famously unforgiving, if not
rabid, don't accuse them of playing recklessly.

Monday, 19 March 2001

Liszt, Vampires and English Passengers

Listening to:

Liszt, Bagatelle sans tonalité. This is a
short little piece. In fact, it’s just finished as I write.
It’s part of a CD of performances by Paul Lewis (a pianist) from
the BBC
Music Magazine. I wouldn’t often buy such a “collection”
CD, but I really enjoy this one. It features Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, Liszt and Schubert.

A recent movie:

Shadow of the Vampire. I didn't really think that
much of this. It was quite atmospheric, but it took itself a
bit too seriously. None of the characters were particularly
interesting or believable. John Malkovich was pretty good as
the obsessive director, but that’s all he was, a one-dimensional
obsessive director. I can’t help but think that this film was
sold as a premise and never really fleshed out. (“It'll be
great: a director makes a vampire film where the vampire
character really is a vampire. Oh, and did I say? The director
will be really obsessive, so much so that he does evil deals
with the vampire just to get his film made.”)

Still reading:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. I’m about two
thirds of the way through this. It’s a great epic, and I’m
really enjoying it.

Holiday reading:

Matthew Kneale,
English passengers. This was a very good
Christmas present. It also recently won the Whitbread Book of
the Year prize. It tells many stories simultaneously, with
a cast of different narrators used to narrate various chapters.
This device works well to demonstrate the characters’ differing
perspectives on the same situations.

There are two principal stories in the novel. One is of an
expedition to Tasmania, led by a daft vicar who is convinced
that Tasmania is the site of the Garden of Eden, and the other
is the story of Peevay, a young Tasmanian Aboriginal who grows
up just as the British settlers there are wiping out all of his
people. Needless to say, both stories eventually overlap.

In a ‘cast of thousands’, it is perhaps a little difficult
to find only three sympathetic characters, heroes if you like,
but the preponderance of brutality, racism and narrow-mindedness
is probably an accurate reflection of the times. Moreover, the
novel is really very exciting, and kept me enthralled
throughout.

Wednesday, 21 March 2001

Films and Games

Listening to:

Bartok, string quartet no. 3 (Sz 85).

A recent movie:

Best in Show. I saw this on a plane from Hong Kong
to Heathrow and thought it very good, even in those rather
trying conditions. (Although I have to say, I think I find it a
lot easier to get to sleep over the muted roar of jet engines
than over the neighbours’ distant pop music when the latter is
the only thing disturbing the night’s quiet.) Anyway, what
about this film then? Very amusing. It’s what is apparently
known as a mockumentary. This means that while taking
on the outward form of a documentary, it is actually an extended
satire.

This film succeeds because it verges just a little into the
unrealistic to make its jokes. The characters seem as if they
just might be real people. The film is based around a big dog
show, and the principal characters are the various contestants
that attend, hoping that their dog will win the grand prize.
They are all a little weird and stereotypical, but very funny as
they negotiate all sorts of quandaries.

The Computer Game

I’ve been playing quite a bit of a new PC game called Europa
Universalis. It’s quite an addictive game in the
Civilisation/Imperialism mould, but better than both, in my opinion,
because of its very well-researched historical setting. Other people
seem to think pretty highly of it too; for example this
review at StrategyGaming is very positive. It finishes (in
incomplete sentences, he’s clearly that rapt):

I
can see if you don’t have much time, or don’t have an interest in
history at all. But outside of that, if you don’t buy this game,
you’re nuts.

Tuesday, 27 March 2001

Martin Chuzzlewit

Listening to:

Rachmaninoff, piano concerto #2 in C minor, op. 18.

Just read:

Charles Dickens,
Martin Chuzzlewit.

This is a big novel, telling
the story of a young man trying to find his way in life, and
learning in the process about the real nature of selfishness.
Supported by a typical Dickensian “cast of thousands”, this
novel is entertaining and full of memorable characters and
incidents. There’s Mr. Pecksniff, the archetypal self-serving
hypocrite, Mrs. Gamp, an alcoholic nurse who is simultaneously
revolting and hilarious, Tom Pinch, a trusting soul who is much
put upon by those around him, and Mark Tapley who seeks the
worst situations to be in because there’s “no credit in being
jolly” if life is too easy.

The plot twists and turns as well. There’s an extended and very
savage portrait of early 19th century America occasioned by the
eponymous (ha!) hero’s trip there, an exciting underworld plot
where thieves and brutes fall out, and over it all, the question
of just how the rich and obstreporous Chuzzlewit patriarch will
deal out his wealth. It really does keep you turning the
pages.

It’s not perfect. Ruth Pinch, Tom's sister, will make you want
to gag, portrayed as a nauseating, fluttery Victorian girlish
ideal. Dickens does this sort of character much better in
David Copperfield, where David’s first wife is
similarly fluttery but at least revealed to be hopeless in
dealing with real life. Merry Pecksniff’s eventual marriage,
though very important to the plot, also seems pretty
unrealistic. Finally, the trip to America seems to be in the
novel mainly so that Dickens can lay into America's faults.

Seven and a half out of ten.

Now reading:

Erich Hoyt, The earth-dwellers. Narrative natural
history about ants. More when I finish it next week.

Thursday, 29 March 2001

Bloatware

Listening to:

Beethoven, sonata no. 3 in A, op 69 for piano and cello.

A recent movie:

Toy Story II. I saw this at home on DVD recently,
and thought it was brilliant. It has a rather gag-inducing song
in the middle about a girl growing up and abandoning her toys,
but it's otherwise extremely amusing and entertaining. On DVD,
we also got to see a bunch of interviews with some of the actors
doing the voices, which was kinda neat.

Joel gets it wrong

I’m going to link to Joel Spolsky again today, but this time I come
not to praise him, but to bury him. His latest article
is about bloat-ware. This is the phenomenon that sees the 1993
installation of Microsoft Excel take up 15 MB of disk-space, and the
version for 2000 take up 146 MB. He dismisses complaints about this
problem by saying that the decreasing cost of hard-disk space has more
than made up for the increase in size, so that in terms of its
space-consumption cost, the 2000 version of Excel is actually
cheaper than its predecessor. He also dismisses complaints
about the fact that big programs have a memory-consumption cost too
(some part of them needs to be loaded into memory); pointing out that
paging and virtual memory combine to ensure that you may not often
have much of the executable in memory at any one time, and the rest
will be consuming more of that cheap disk-space. Further, this means
that start-up times for the application will likely be pretty
good.

So far, so good. This stuff is all perfectly correct. But it’s not
the real reason to feel annoyed about bloatware. My objection to it
is that it’s a sign of poor craftsmanship. Does Spolsky really think
that it's admirable that at least some versions of Excel include a
flight simulator Easter Egg?

He explains bloatware thus:

In fact there are lots of great reasons for bloatware. For one, if
programmers don’t have to worry about how large their code is, they
can ship it sooner. And that means you get more features, and features
make your life better (when you use them) and don’t usually hurt (when
you don’t). If your software vendor stops, before shipping, and spends
two months squeezing the code down to make it 50% smaller, the net
benefit to you is going to be imperceptible. Maybe, just maybe, if you
tend to keep your hard drive full, that's one more Duran Duran MP3 you
can download.

That looks like one dodgy reason to me, not lots of great ones. If
shipping software quickly is the overriding concern, then the result
may well be better results for the company producing the code, but
what does the consumer get? Insufficiently debugged, poorly tested
code that crashes more than it should. Maybe all of those features
that have been pushed into the new program are interacting in subtle
ways with the flight simulator. Maybe the fact that several versions
of the same library code have been linked with the application is an
indication that the people developing the code didn't really have any
idea about what they were doing when they wrote it.